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OLPC Project Interface Revealed
BogusToo writes to mention an EE Times article describing the interface for the OLPC project laptop. Using some fairly intuitive UI concepts (like simplified web browsers and a chat client), the Linux-based system attempts to do away with the kludgey parts of computer use. A video demo of the interface has been placed on YouTube. From the article: "Earlier postings around the Internet have also shown how the physical design of the laptop has changed, including the elimination of the much touted on-board hand crank that was supposed to power the cheap, lime green laptop. It's still there, reportedly, but has now been moved to the power adapter. The OLPC's produced earlier this week in Shanghai still need to go through loads of testing, such as knocking them off desks and dropping them in mud, as kids are wont to do. They may also be kicked around, like soccer balls, a popular sport in 99.9 percent of the world."
Having worked for a school, I know how durable these devices are going to have to be to withstand day-to-day use. The Compaq, Toshiba and NEC laptops of 10 years ago didn't take much more than a nudge to the back of the LCD to crack it or break the backlight, leaving the (admittedly rich) parents to fork out another $3,000 for a replacement unit, or $1,200 for the out-of-warranty repair.
I hope that these computers end up being not just "cheap" but inexpensive to own, operate and repair. Insurance premiums on cars go up if the cost of parts/repair is high; the perceived value of this device changes in inverse proportion to this - why would a school/state/country buy thousands of them if the spare parts/repair cost is going to be high?
Here's hoping it's right when it comes out ...
WANRING: This warning is misspelt.
Actually, although the youtube demo shows mostly everything, you can try it yourself using emulation (it runs on a x86 after all).
Intructions are here. It uses QEMU and a special 100Mb system image.
Happy slashdotting...
From TFV:
"Note that there is no url bar" (in the browser)
I really hope there's more to it than that. I mean, I realize that google isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but having any single search engine be the mandatory primary interface for the web, to the exclusion of even being able to type in urls directly seems insane to me.
<marge>Hrmmm....</marge>
I agree, I hope they can stand the rough climates of some of the third world countires... for example Chiapas climate (in Mexico) can be really hard for electronics (humidity and rain) and if this is going to kids who have never owned a high tech portable equipment they must be quite durable.
One thing I was wondering while watching the video is that it seems there is no way to open a terminal. I agree that the interface MUST be dumbed down a lot but I am also completely sure that there MUST be a terminal in order to access more "complex" things in the computer. I know (from personal experience) that the kids are the first ones to learn the new technologies and exploit them. If you are going to give them this computer, then lets make them able to get the most out of it.
A terminal and a python enabled system would be enough (IMHO).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Why is the GUI non-standard?
Because all the existing GUIs in the world today --- including System 6 --- are overweight, overcomplicated, way more powerful than are needed, fiddly, baroque, inconsistent, difficult to use, difficult to learn, and in fact are downright scary to people who aren't accustomed to computers.
KDE, Gnome, Windows, OSX, etc are all completely inappropriate for a machine of this nature.
(In fact, I still think they have a lot of work to do. The relationship between activities isn't particularly clear. Some applications, such as the word processor, still use popup menus, which is very bad. Etoys --- that's Squeak, isn't it? --- is visually inconsistent with the rest of the system. But at least they're heading in the right direction.)
Speaking of which, the word processor is using a picture of a floppy disc to represent saving a file. Since a)The OLPC doesnt have a floppy disc and b)The target users may never have seen a floppy disc, they may need a new icon...
I've seen people do stupider things to their computers and bring them in to have them fixed and I live in the 'brilliant' USA...
A lady brought in her favorite keyboard, wanted it repaired. Did not want a replacement, as she only liked that keyboard. The keyboard's problems were two fold:
a: Her daughter had taken it out back and used it for a rousing pickup game of baseball (as the bat)
b: her daughter had found the cord to be a nuicance and cut it off with a pair of scissors.
I've had SEVERAL machines come in with the VGA connector pulled off the motherboard when people try to detach the screwed on cable without unscrewing it first.
I had a business owner carefully disassemble his hard drive and bring in the platers in a zip lock baggie because we told him if he brought in his harddrive we might be able to recover the data (the drive had not been dead, just generating a lot of errors when he replaced it.) He needed the data on the drive for a tax audit begining at 8am the next morning.
I often talk to people who can't get something to work primarily because it isn't plugged in. For example, no dialtone on the modem because there is no phone line hooked to the computer. No video signal because the monitor is not hooked up to anything (there are no cables coming off of the monitor at all... heard that more than once... that's because you didn't hook the cables too the monitor that came with it).
Printers regularly get sprayed with WD-40.
A customer took a wireless router from us and wanted to mount it on the wall, so he drilled two holes through the middle of the router and screwed it to the wall. Then expected a refund when it didn't work. Another tech tells me a tale of someone drilling a hole through their LCD display to mount it on the wall, but I'm not sure I believe that.
We had a laptop back there last week which had several muddy boot prints on both top and bottom, and numerous dings where it obviously got tossed around. According to the bringer, it's their son's laptop and he just brings it in from college, tosses it on the floor, and regularly walks on it.
We had a customer that bought several of those 'small' Dell computers (business machines that are small tower/desktop units... bookshelf style I think they are called) in a row. They were the cheapest thing dell was selling in the line, and came with about a 60 day warranty. The all died in less than 6 months. The customer was putting the Pentium 4 computers in a desk drawer and then piling papers on top of them. I've also had a customer use their computer to block a heating vent in the winter because they didn't like the warm air blowing directly upon them.
I've had people cut the wires on their fans because they didn't like the noise (or even better, jam them with a stick).
Someone whittled down the power connector to plug in a new hard drive because it didn't fit (had it upside down) and killed the drive.
A supposed A+ certied tech brought us 5 machines he was building. He had tried to hammer the processors into their sockets (he hadn't pulled the lever up).
And finally, I worked on an Amiga 500 once that had no keyboard... just the membrane pad underneath it with letters marked on it with a sharpie. Upon opening it there were about 500 22 gauge wires inside. Why? because the owner had physically picked the machine up and thrown it across the room where it hit the doorframe, destroyed the keyboard and physically broke the motherboard in half. I was just adding memory to it, at the time (a year or two after the breakage) it was actually working.